Ah yes, the age old problem:

Reply All is Different From Reply.

CBS News, who by all accounts showed their inability to do news with their botched Republican debate Saturday night, continued to screw themselves.

First, you have a moderator rudely chastising New Gingrich on his inability to understand the rule of law, only to have Gingrich leg sweep him. Result: CBS moderators look like brainless prats, while Gingrich bumps up a percentage point for looking like he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

Second, you have the bizarre decision to have the final third of the debate streamed on the web. Why? Nobody was watching CBS anyway. Show the full thing. Shows how bad the programming decisions are made there.

Third, the web feed failed because CBS has no idea how this trendy internet crap works. In the corporate world, that gets people fired.

Finally, adding an underscore to that comment about teh intarwebs, a CBS news director receives an email about the Bachmann campaign, and hits Reply All, not realizing that this also included Bachmann’s communications director—who was courtesy copied on the original email.

Said news director then went on to ridicule the Bachmann campaign, and indicated she would not be given any real questions to answer anyway because she wasn’t popular enough.

For the last few years, mainstream news has been struggling to reassure Americans that they show no partisanship in their coverage, despite all that irritating evidence to the contrary.

So CBS confirmed what candidates like Jon Huntsman, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and (God help us) Ron Paul have been saying: they are not getting serious treatment by the MSM because they aren’t threatening enough to Barack Obama.

Then this happens, which basically is the head of news for a major network admitting “You bet you aren’t.”

Morons: is there anything they can’t do?

Can we not simply return to the old days, when Walter Cronkite would, with great dignity and without a hint of partisanship, reassure Americans that Republicans were toolbags, and that they were right to vote for Democrats?

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.